Good Cop, Bad Cop
by Cyri's Alter Ego
Summary: "The shinobi holding the weapon bares his teeth at me. "Surprised to see a ninja with a gun, kid?" he drawls. His breath smells like lemon cider. I'm terrified he's going to pull the trigger by accident." They fight, they feud, they argue, they insist on their differences, but good cop or bad cop, they are one and the same. /slight Yukumohira/


_As I've said before, there are not NEARLY enough Nabari-fics, and not ANY Tobari/Yukimi whatsoever. I thought I'd better correct that._

_It's not blatant slash, only hinty-hints that can probably be gleaned from watching/reading the series anyway ^^ The kid narrating here can be anyone you can imagine, it's not a specific person... maybe one of the kids from the Alya Academy arc, perhaps?_

_Don't own Nabari *cries*_

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**Good Cop, Bad Cop**

* * *

Slowly, hardly breathing, I lift my hands above my head. The kunai I'm holding falls to clatter on the floor, sounding far too loud in the silence. At my temple there is a gun. A very cold, very real, very deadly gun.

The shinobi holding it bares his teeth at me. He's a blonde, ratty-looking, but at the moment his appearance doesn't concern me nearly as much as his weapon does. "Surprised to see a ninja with a gun, kid?" he drawls.

I am, but I don't think I'm supposed to answer.

He grasps a handful of my hair and shoves me against the wall, leering in my face. His breath smells like lemon cider. I'm terrified he's going to pull the trigger by accident. He's not exactly being careful.

"So, ya gonna tell us who sentcha?"

Still I say nothing. I don't think I could say a word if I wanted to.

The shinobi raises his eyebrows, then he pulls back, rubbing the back of his neck. The gun falls limply in his hand. "_Ma-an_, I really hate kids," he sighs. The awful pressure is gone from the side of my head. I nearly crumple. "I don't wanna shootcha, ya know? But you're not exactly makin' my job a whole lot easier, get what I'm sayin', kid?"

"...Leave it."

I almost crick my neck, I turn so fast. A man in a suit with rumpled dark hair is walking towards us, one hand in his pocket. He looks annoyed.

The blonde shinobi doesn't give him a second glance. "Oh. Heya, bedhead," he greets him dismissively. "Here to disgrace th' name of shinobi again?"

"If you mean here to stop you murdering a defenceless child, then yeah." The new shinobi stops short in front of us and turns to me, his expression softening. "You okay?"

I shrink back when he offers me his hand - I'd have to be stupid to accept the help of a rival shinobi.

But he says, "It's okay, you can trust me."

"Sad thing is, ya can." The blonde rolls his eyes in a way that makes me think the two have butted heads over this before. "Softest bleedin' shinobi you'll ever meet."

"There's nothing soft about trying to preserve lives," the other shoots back as I get to my feet.

The first one shoves his hand in his pocket. "Sure, whatever. Kid tried to kill _me_, Mr Big Bad Life-Preservation Sensei. As in, blade-to-the-neck kinda thing. 'Scuse me fer tryin' to find out why."

"That doesn't mean you have to start waving that thing around." The dark-haired man eyes the gun with disgust. "Someone could get hurt."

"Jeez!" The disbelief is etched onto the blonde's face - he throws up his hands. "Call yourself a ninja?"

"Call yourself one? Can you even remember how to do mist evasion?"

I can barely believe it. The two of them are bickering like an old married couple. Maybe they won't notice if I-

"Not so fast, kid." The blonde ninja whips around before I've taken two steps, pinning me against the wall once again. The gun's back at my head. It's no less scary than the first time, and my breath comes in harsh gasps.

"Stop it!" The dark-haired one tries to yank the blonde back by his jacket hood, but his efforts are so futile that it's funny. The blonde laughs.

"Seriously? _Sensei_?" He turns the word into a cruel mockery. "And you wonder why ya got people running away from you." He's being so careless with that gun, gesturing so violently that my life's in seriously jeopardy of ending without anyone noticing. It's gone past terrifying now. Now I'm looking with curious detachment at the shinobi in front of me.

It's slightly odd how they're fighting over me, but how clearly they aren't interested in me. They're following what's obviously a well-rehearsed routine. They're completely absorbed in each other.

"Okay," says the blonde suddenly, smirking. "How's this, sensei? You can help me."

A frown appears on the dark-haired shinobi's face. "Help you? What the-" But then his blonde counterpart grins and grabs his wrist, dragging him closer.

"You be the good cop," he explains, as though his listener were very slow, "and I'll be the bad cop."

"That's stupid," complains the other man. "We're shinobi of the Nabari world, which means we're outside the realms of normal law, and you've got a gun, which is flat-out illegal, so we're probably as far away from policemen as you can possibly get-"

He freezes as the gun is pointed between my eyes. "Afraid of a little roleplay?" sneers its owner. He looks at me. "Gonna tell me who sentcha here, or am I gonna have to redecorate the wall behind ya?"

I say nothing. I'm scared, but I'm a shinobi, and that means my silence has value above my life.

I also want to see what will happen next. What the dark-haired ninja will do.

"Don't say that!" he protests at once. To me, he says, "Listen, why don't you just tell him? He'll let you go then. Really."

The blonde nudges him. "There ya go, you're gettin' the hang of it."

"...Be quiet."

The blonde one's still got hold of his wrist.

They're virtually holding hands.

...That's pretty funny.

Or it would be, if I was observing this situation from the sides.

But now the blonde's getting restless. "C'mon, short-kun, I ain't got all day." He presses the gun against my forehead, hard enough to hurt, and smirks as I go cross-eyed trying to keep it in view.

"That's _enough_."

Suddenly, the dark-haired one reaches over and tries to snatch the gun from his companion. It works for a moment, and the gun is thrust away from me, the blonde shinobi caught off-guard. A second later he grits his teeth and shoves the weapon in the other ninja's face. "What the hell d'ya think you're tryin' to pull?" he demands furiously.

"I _said_, that's _enough_!" Bedhead lunges and impulsively tries to wrestle the gun out of the blonde's grasp. The blonde trips with a yell and topples to the floor, and in another moment the two men are fighting on the ground like squabbling schoolboys.

I've never seen anything less resembling a ninja in all my life.

But now their attention seems fully diverted from me at last. The blood pounds in my head as I watch them and wonder if I should run, and wonder if they'd notice me, and wonder if they'd notice anything but each other, and I watch them and I wonder, and then one of them kicks out and there is a loud _bang_ like a gunshot, and then I see the bullet buried in my chest.

I see it and I fall.

The dark-haired shinobi immediately frees himself and rushes to my side, trying to help me, supporting my head. But I don't want him there. Behind him stands the blonde, and I can tell from his expression that not once did he intend to shoot. He's as soft as he pretends not to be.

I can see them both. I want them to stand together.

The good cop with the suit and the blue eyes.

The bad cop with the blonde hair and the gun.

The lines are beginning to blur. Their differences are smudging into one another like a messy drawing, and I can't tell whether that blank horror stamped identically onto their faces is real or a result of my deliria.

But I know that they are the same.

And they are the last thing I see before I am sucked under.


End file.
